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I’ve been noticing a trend: I go on the XBLA indie channel, and I see something that
looks rather... “derived,” shall we say, from another game I know. Let’s face it,
thanks to the ubiquity of Will Wright, as soon as you see the word “City” in the
title in a metropolitan font, you know what’s up. There’s going to be a FIRESTORM OF URBAN
PLANNING UP IN THIS PIECE. Hardcore municipal development, yo. Word. But, hand in hand with
this trend, comes a fat ol’ slice of humble pie: Sometimes, and in fact, oftentimes, I’m
mistaken. Despite some similarities in concept, these games I’ve been playing have been
very much their own beasts, and MegaCity tied a bib around my neck, handed me a knife and
fork, and picked my brain with city-planning-puzzle-action. And Gershwin. Because if you want that big-city
feel, all you really need is Rhapsody in Blue.
In MegaCity, like in many puzzle games, your goal is survival. But rather than navigating
stacks of falling blocks, you’re designing a city, block by block. Each column of your
city is scored based on the value of the houses it contains, values that are affected by the
placement of nearby buildings. As each block comes up through the queue on the left of
the screen, you can see by its little 3x3 diagram exactly what effect it’ll have on
its surroundings, with blue squares indicating a raise in value, red a decrease, and arrows
indicating an effect that extends throughout that particular row or column. As such, you’ll
want to place beneficial buildings like hospitals and parks right in the middle of things, while
landfills, factories and the like are best banished to the periphery of the city limits.
Once the leftmost column meets its quota, the board shifts to the right, opening a new....
tract of land, and the game continues onward.
The more you play, the more CITY PLANNING EXPERIENCE POINTS you earn, which unlock new
buildings. In addition to the the standard mode, there are puzzle challenges that give
you a limited number of blocks to clear a particular number of columns, with large EXP
jackpots for successful solutions. All this... and Gershwin. Yep, you’re gonna be hearing
that clarinet line for days to come. This is a dangerous little game; the first time
I sat down with it, I was enraptured for a good 40 minutes. If you think you’ve got
better things to do with your XBox 360 than play a high-def board game about mall placement
and urban sprawl... then get the iPhone version. I’m sure Dr. Wright won’t mind. He’s
too busy making buildings appear under various Nintendo combatants.